i like the flavor of a lot of the early expansions but they are incredibly unbalanced. 'legends' in particular is a terrible set and all the legends are retarded, little attempt to think abt e.g. how casting costs should be balanced w/mana flow. according to the internet the early sets were developed half with the idea that they could be played as standalone so cards like camel or city or in a bottle make a lot more sense/are useful in that context.

banding can be really good but its sorta overused in the early expansions imo all those legends unique lands that granted banding &c

my least favorite thing abt the new sets is that they added 'equipment' instead of basic enchantments, i tried playing a sealed tournament early this summer with w/e expansion was coming out and i just didnt vibe it at all

my least favorite thing abt the new sets is that they added 'equipment' instead of basic enchantments, i tried playing a sealed tournament early this summer with w/e expansion was coming out and i just didnt vibe it at all

I like the equipment. The problem with creature enchantment is that your opponent can just destroy the creature and kill two cards for the price of one. I loved the ones that were "living weapons", that was a super cool idea.

what's funny is how baneslayer angel was a $40 card that was in a ton of decks one year, and then a $5 card that saw almost no play the next year

Basically, as long as this card is legal, no creature w/ 5 toughness that doesn't protect itself will ever be truly "broken". This gives them the freedom to print stuff that seems really stupidly powerful (like the Phyrexian Obliterator, WTF) without having to worry about things running away from them. Now the big beaters of choice are the Titans which is almost certainly because they are 6/6s

I think the problem is there's this idea that you always have to give people something fresh and different and inevitable you're gonna run into diminshing returns w/ new ideas that can fit within what 'works' within the dynamics of mtg

i think my biggest issue with planeswalkers is that they're so big and obvious. a lot of the strongest cards in magic's history look completely innocuous the first time you see them. like, for example, this card:http://magiccards.info/wwk/en/20.htmlspent the first year or so of its existence as a bargain bin rare. then one day some pro players decided to try it in their blue-white control deck. 6 months later, it's in every deck in t2 and gets banned.

i really like the idea that there are these awesome cards lurking out there that no one's figured out yet, and planewalkers really play against that discovery process by coming with hype already attached

equipment doesn't make sense, how can a pile of sludge have a battle axe or whatever and again, it's just not-mtg, artifacts already played that role

ehhh, that kind of plausability went out the window from the very first set. when you had Merfolk that lived underwater yet could still block land creatures. or the infamous Whooperwill, the bird without flying

i think my biggest issue with planeswalkers is that they're so big and obvious. a lot of the strongest cards in magic's history look completely innocuous the first time you see them. like, for example, this card:http://magiccards.info/wwk/en/20.htmlspent the first year or so of its existence as a bargain bin rare. then one day some pro players decided to try it in their blue-white control deck. 6 months later, it's in every deck in t2 and gets banned.

i really like the idea that there are these awesome cards lurking out there that no one's figured out yet, and planewalkers really play against that discovery process by coming with hype already attached

I think the game can exist with both. Stoneforge is a weird case because it really was not good when it first game out as there really wasn't any good equipment. I think it was pretty evident that it was going to be amazing if playable equipment was printed - it never should have dipped to only a buck.

In general I think it's not too tough to figure out what these cards are. I stocked up on Entombs because it was very efficient (one mana instant) and did something no other card did even though it didn't have a use in Type 2 - now it's $40. There were a bunch of Future Sight cards like that too, which were so unique and interacted with other cards in such strange ways that it's no surprise that some of them jumped so high. Tarmogoyf was the ultimate example, that thing went from $3 to about $80 in less than a year!

xxp Basically that one starts with 3 counters (the number in the lower right corner), then each turn you can use one ability by adding or subtracting the "cost" on the left. It can also be attacked and directly damaged as though it was a player. Kinda weird but overall pretty neat

the funniest price spike was definitely Necropotence, a card that nobody wanted because A) it had way too many words on it and was really confusing, and B) players hated paying life and didn't really care about card advantage, then some guys started winning tournaments with it and everyone realized "wait, this card basically says you can draw as many cards as you want, that's really good" as it jumped from $5 to like $25

yeah that was really the first era of higher-level analysis w/r/t playing dynamics. after that the mirage era prosperous bloom deck really took the game somewhere else - before that you couldn't imagine a deck that sophisticated that actually functioned and wasn't just for fun.

my friend has most of the mox gems and every og dual land in both alpha/beta and unlimited and when we first playing i couldnt believe how much they were worth. his arent in perfect condition or anything cuz he played with most of them but the prices for old rare magic cards are o_O

also going back but i object to equipment more on game flavor than mechanics, some of the actual cards are p rad, i just dont like how rpg-ish it is, i guess? tbh my real problem is just the too slick and heavy card art and the stupid sci fi dystopia concept

I think the problem is there's this idea that you always have to give people something fresh and different and inevitable you're gonna run into diminshing returns w/ new ideas that can fit within what 'works' within the dynamics of mtg

I dunno, the Time Spiral block seemed to indicate that they aren't even close. Basically the "theme" of the set was the game itself, so a bunch of cards would reference older cards, and old mechanics like flanking and shadow came back, plus each pack had a random card out of a set of old cards throughout the game's history, with the old art and card face and everything, and were all legal to play even if they were horribly out of flavor. Then Planar Chaos came along as was like this "alternate reality" of magic, where white had burn and green had card draw. And Future Sight blew the doors off everything, adding another new card face, like a dozen new keyword mechanics, a bunch of cards that did things no other card had done before, cards that made no sense under current rules, and a card that referenced Planeswalkers even though they hadn't been printed yet. The whole block seemed like it was a clear "jump the shark" moment for the game but they handled it really well and demonstrated that there was a lot of design space left.

at the height of my powers i was playing a p aggressive green/white deck that did well for me at middle school but was consistently getting my ass kicked when i went to HEAD GAMES or the other comic shop in my town, the name of which i cant remember, but which had like a super extensive hentai collection

thing is i mostly played some combination of red/green/white aggro/beatdown decks but i always really wanted to a blue control kind of guy. story of my life i guess.

btw i had a pretty big though not distinguished collection of magic cards when i stopped playing, and i gave them to my brother to sell to the shop in town, promising him a 50/50 split or something, and then for some unfathomable reason he buried them in our backyard? wish i still had those cards, or at least some money.